[EM] [CES #4445] Re: Looking at Condorcet

[Juho Laatu]

On 9.2.2012, at 18.07, robert bristow-johnson wrote:

> On 2/8/12 1:25 PM, Juho Laatu wrote:
>> On 8.2.2012, at 7.33, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>> 
>> ...
>>> if it's not the majority that rule, what's the alternative?
>> I'm not aware of any good alternatives to majority rule in competitive two-candidate elections (with some extra assumptions that rule out random ballot etc.).
>> 
>> Juho
> 
> thank you Juho, for stipulating to the obvious.  i will confess that i am astonished at the resistance displayed here at the EM list to this obvious fact.
> 
> so, we all know how Condorcet (i believe) extends this logically to a multi-candidate race, right?

Condorcet is a natural extension to the multi-candidate case (still assuming competitive elections). Maybe not the only one though. In another mail I just addressed the possbility of having single-winner elections that aim at electing the winner from one of the major parties (or more accurately, from one of the top two most representative camps). Condocet could however maybe be seen as the most natural extension and a natural fisrt proposal for typical / basic single-winner elections.

>  if Candidate A is the best candidate to be awarded office, that means that Candidate A is better than Candidate B.  it also means that Candidate A is better than Candidate C.  if Candidate A is the best candidate, it means that no other candidate is better than Candidate A.
> 
> so, how do we determine who is better?  we could make them take an exam to show how much they know about job that the elected office entails.  or we could make the candidates arm wrestle.  but, in a democracy, the way we determine that one candidate is better than some other is that we ask the electorate.  sorta like Pilate asking the crowd to choose between Jesus and Barabbas.  the ranked ballot tells us who the voter chooses given any pair of choices.
> 
> it's simple.  when a Condorcet winner exists, to elect *anyone* other than the Condorcet winner is the same as awarding office to the loser in a simple Two-candidate, Simple majority, One-person-one-vote election and i cannot see a *single* justification for doing that.  the "weak CW" argument does not cut it at all.

For typical single-winner elections, yes. In special cases, like the one that I discussed above, also other approaches may be possible.

So I agree that Condorcet methods are a good first assumption (for competitive elections).

Juho


> 
> i'm willing to let this rest again for a while.  until someone else digs up the corpse.
> 
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> r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com
> 
> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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